The Righteous Join a Pilgrimage to the Holy Land

During their stay in Israel, the veterans visited sites where the Polish 2nd Corps, under the command of General Władysław Anders, was formed. They also honoured the memory of around 120,000 Polish citizens - Poles, Jews, Belarusians and Ukrainians - soldiers in the Polish Army in the east who, during World War II, found themselves within the British Mandate of Palestine.

The pilgrimage began on 29th March 2017 with visiits to Christian holy sites. The veterans visited the Garden of Gethsemany (the Olive Garden) where Christ prayed prior to being crucified, the Church of All Nations for a special shared Holy Mass, the Via Dolorosa, the third Station of the Cross with its chapel bearing a cross donated by soldiers of Anders' Army, as well as the Basilica of the Holy Sepulche. They laid flowers in Nazareth and Tiberias, as well as in Haifa, Jaffa, Ramla and on Mount Zion at the Polish war graves cemetery.

Pilgrimage participants also visited the Yad Vashemn Holocaust Memorial on Mount Herzl in Jerusalem, established to document the history of the Jewish people during the Holocaust and to memorialise the victims of that period.

Read more about the Yad Vashem Institute

In Yad Vashem's Hall of Remembrance, the Righteous Józef Walaszczyk and Tadeusz Stankiewicz, together with other members of the delegation, laid wreathes and then visited the Garden of the Righteous, where several thousand trees have been planted in honour of the Righteous. The Garden also contains memorial plaques containing all the names of those honoured - over 26,000 individuals from several dozen countries.

The pilgrimage, which was organised by the Office for War Veterans and Victims of Oppression of the Republic of Poland, will conclude on Friday.